Suchergebnisse

Concerned with the civil services of the United Kingdom, this book examines their characteristics and trends since 1970. It assesses the UK's changing civil services in the wake of two decades of public sector management reforms and New Labour's constitutional reform programme, devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

This article seeks to answer two questions: What do we know about the work of ministers and permanent secretaries? How do we know what we know about ministers and permanent secretaries? To do so, it describes a research project on life at the top of British government departments and discusses the issues raised by trying to do research and write a political anthropology of the daily life of ministers and civil servants. The article has four sections. First, it surveys briefly the existing literature on ministers and top civil servants. Second, it describes the scope and methods of the project. Third, it reports some early findings. Finally, it reflects on the distinctive contribution of ethnographic research to understanding British government and the problems of elite interviewing, nonparticipant observation, and research on the powerful.

Provides a theoretical defence of situated agency located in the historical context of British political science; compares their approach to British political science with others including, post-structural and institutional analysis; and more. This book is useful to those in political theory, public policy, British politics, and British history

How should we study government? How do we know what we know about British government? What is governance? Governance in Britain has changed enormously from the market-led Thatcher years to Blair's 'joined up government'. The authors provide a radical challenge to conventional analyses of the subject.

This article asks, 'how do practitioners understand the relationship between the prime minister, ministers and the rest of Westminster and Whitehall?' We focus on three topics. First, we review tales of a Blair presidency. Second, we explore the governance paradox in which people tell tales of a Blair presidency as they recount stories of British governance that portray it as fragmented with several decision-makers. Finally, we argue that this paradox reveals the distorting influence the Westminster model still exerts on many accounts of British politics. It acts as a smokescreen for the changes in executive politics.